


Blood & Silence

by viceversa



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Depression, Gen, as I watched 6x5, its really just an angsty drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25252237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceversa/pseuds/viceversa
Summary: Jeff spirals through 6x05, Laws of Robotics & Party RightsAn angst filled oneshot because I’m in a mood.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	Blood & Silence

When everyone at Britta’s party was more excited to dance with literal convicts on iPads than attempt to talk to him, Jeff realized that was rock bottom.

Well, rock bottom for the week, so far, anyway. 

He could deal with Britta’s bad advice (that was really just an I-told-you-so), and he could deal with Abed’s rejection for him as a party guest performer, but his popularity being less than digitally present prisoners was the last straw. 

Seeing Willy - again, a literal bad guy - on that tiny screen with the Dean dancing in front of him really made it all hit home. When the hell had  not  getting inappropriate attention from the Dean been a problem anyway? 

Was it weird that no one seemed to care that Willy tried to push him down the stairs? 

So Jeff left the party. There was another party he was late for: getting incredibly drunk in his own home, alone.

For years he thought that losing his job as a lawyer and having to go to community college had been the low point in his life. Then teaching at that college? Pretty low, still. Then, turning 40 years old, looking at his life thus far and being so overcome with anxiety and panic that he tries to reverse aging with enough scotch and black market youth pills to end up in the hospital - it really hadn’t been a great year. 

Now he was being targeted by a murderer, bullied by an unpopular nerd student, and ignored and dismissed by his so-called friends. 

His so-called family. 

So he drinks. Not enough to wake up in the hospital again, God knows he doesn’t need another GI Joe nightmare and dramatic family scene, but enough to pass out. 

Just before his vision goes black, he wonders if his family would show up at the hospital again or if he’d worn out his welcome after the first time he felt too much. 

-

He shows up to campus on time and hungover, determined to blow past the whole convicts on wheels thing and move on with his depressing life, but the Willy shows up again. 

If he’s less of a man for letting an iPad on wheels incite enough rage in him to throw it down down the stairs, then so be it. 

For half a second before the Dean shows up, he looks at the crumpled pile of technology at the bottom of the stairs and sees himself. If Willy had been there for real, that would’ve been Jeff. Except instead of wires and sparks and drama, it would’ve been blood and silence. 

The Dean puts him on forceful sabbatical. Jeff goes home to his old friend, his one constant. Scotch. 

It helps, just enough.

-

The group meets at the bar because Jeff isn’t allowed on campus, and he tries to hide how drunk he is already. They don’t sugarcoat the ceremony where the Dean, officially crazy, was currently promoting Willy - again, a convicted  _ murderer _ \- to professor. 

Replaced by a violent felon on an iPad. Another check to Jeff Winger’s list on how to win at life. 

And maybe it’s just him and the string of shitty things and shitty moods this week had thrust upon him, but Jeff doesn’t want to apologize to the Dean through some wacky invention of the group. He just want to leave the bar and go home. 

So he does. 

-

Home is half a bottle of scotch and two weeks of isolation stretching ahead of him. Maybe he could use the forced freedom to find a way out. 

He still knew some of the old partners at the firm. He could take up lawyering again, release that black part of his soul that could manipulate with the best of them. That was his goal anyway, right? To get back at his life - the money, the hot girls, the clout of being the best in a macho field of constantly butting egos. 

That would show them. Jeff didn’t need Greendale to survive. It had trapped him, and now that it felt so obvious that he’d been replaced by the next new and shiny thing, it was time to move on. 

The only people that ever cared about him were his middle school peers, represented in Get Well Soon cards, still hidden under his bed. He’d had to draw blood back then to even be noticed, all for pity. 

_Well_ ,  Jeff thought,  _ I won’t bleed for Greendale _ .


End file.
